Narrowly escaping death in the Congo during the 1964 rebellion - the McAllister family went through it all for their missionary work.

The Belfast family, made up of Bob McAllister, his late wife Alma and their three children, stared death in the face during their time in the African state in the 1960s.

Now their ordeal is the subject of a BBC NI documentary set to air tonight which tells how they were caught up in the eye of the storm but came back every time to complete their mission.

Last year, 50 years on from the rebellion, 89-year-old Bob and his children Bill and Ruth, made the journey to Congo to join his second son David, who works for a humanitarian relief agency in the country, to remember the missionaries martyred by the Simbas.

A TV crew followed them on that emotional trip as they paid their respects and shared memories with each other of the time. The hour-long programme tells how the missionary family came to be in Congo, their captivity and dramatic rescues.

Speaking on BBC's Good Morning Ulster, son Bill told how the family were held hostage, faced machine guns and watched as friends were killed by the rebels.

"We lost 14 missionaries who were killed and never forgetting the thousands of Congolese Christians killed as a result," he said.

Bill, who was 12 at the time of the rebellion, told of the day his family were given the chance to leave Congo by the American consulate but his parents chose to stay.

In another terrifying experience, the family were taken hostage.

"This group came in and lined us all up, we were facing machine guns and what not and they were ordered to kill the white hostages," he said.

"For some reason they could not do it."

He said from that point he knew there was a greater power and has been a committed Christian since then.

Dad Bob said: “We lost our earthly possessions three times over with rebellions. I mean everything, all our household equipment and bedding and kitchen stuff, lost in rebellions and we had nothing.”

Bob’s wife Alma and children, Bill, David and Ruth, were first forced to leave the country in 1960 and their eldest son Bill vividly recalls that time.

Arriving at the airport for the evacuation, Bill said: "It was like an old Hollywood film at the airport, there were rows and rows of cars and people running around trying to get their kids onto the last airplanes going out.

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"Suitcases were being thrown around and there was a lot of shouting and screaming, but Dad was pushing and trying to get us onto an airplane. And when we took off from Stanleyville, we saw Dad, a wee dot away down below and he was waving at us.

"He got us out and then he and a lot of other men missionaries stayed behind. Then for six months we didn’t hear anything and we thought he had been killed and we went back to Ireland."

Men were not allowed to leave the country at that time, and eventually Bob managed to escape from the country into Uganda and on into Kenya and back home.

Undeterred from the experience, the McAllisters and other missionaries returned to Congo to continue their work.

Ruth Reynard, Bob and Alma’s daughter, said: “To me my mother is the bravest woman I have ever known in my life. My mum was a nurse and she worried an awful lot that we would get ill, so it wasn’t easy for my mother. And so I can say that she was brave because she overcame a lot of her own fears and insecurities about being in a country like Congo.”

After narrowly escaping death in 1964, the McAllisters were once again airlifted out of the Congo and returned again in 1965.

Speaking of their time working in the country, Bob said: “As far as I see it, it has been worth everything we have gone through to see the growth of the Church, that’s what we went out for to spread the good news of the Gospel.”

The film has been made for BBC Northern Ireland by Erica Starling Productions with assistance from the Northern Ireland Screen Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund.

A Deadly Mission Belfast To Congo is on BBC One Northern Ireland on Thursday, July 30, at 9pm